Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

I wanted to persist with this first entry in the modern Prince of Persia series, but I found in each session I dedicated to the game that the negatives outweighed the positives. The platforming, perhaps the most defining characteristic of Prince of Persia, is enjoyable all these years after The Sands of Time's release.

You'll spend at least half of your in-game time platforming, and so it's great to see that this feature has aged well. That isn't to call it easy, however. This game is surprisingly punishing in fall damage; you'd probably expect the Prince to survive larger drops than a GTA character... and you'd be wrong! I assume the developer's intention was to ensure the player took no shortcuts and completed the levels as intended. It's frustrating, but workable.

If only the combat had aged like the platforming. The Sands of Time's enemies appear out of thin air as in Final Fantasy, arriving in wave after wave with no indication ever given as to how much longer a battle will remain. When the first three enemies appeared in the most recent area I played through, I had no idea whether I'd be facing a further three, or six, or twenty. Water fountains (the game's healing stations) are generally at hand, but good luck disengaging from the combat system's auto-lock and being able to actually use them.

The final feature I'd like to draw attention to is the ability to rewind in-game. While limited by how much sand you've collected (sand serves as a kind of action-point), being able to backtrack after a fatal misstep is a huge boon to the player. Perhaps unintentionally, the rewind feature helps in compensating for the The Sands of Time's poorly-aged qualities. For example, I often attempted to jump onto a pillar or platform that wasn't, in fact, grippable. This would invariably prove fatal.

Trying to be objective, there are probably more positives than negatives in playing Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time in 2022. Note at the start of my review, I said that the negatives *outweighed* the positives. The combat is so detrimental to my enjoyment of the game, I'm willing to set it aside entirely and forego the many moments of fun platforming, puzzle-cracking and exploration that I'm sure would await.